Beautiful World, Where Are You

Alice’s letter apologizes for worrying Eileen with her busy schedule but defends her work as a “tiresome” and “degrading” necessity. In response to Eileen’s thoughts about aestheticism, Alice counters that aesthetic experience may not even warrant such serious scrutiny. She continues, talking about aesthetic judgment from Enlightenment philosophy. Alice challenges Eileen’s critique of consumer beauty, wondering who should care if beauty is more present in classic paintings or Chanel handbags. Aside from visual art, Alice talks about reading as an emotionally involved, active process of applying aesthetic judgment, and she notes that engagement in a story requires a reader’s sympathy for the story’s characters.

These complicated sympathies towards humanity are evidence of Alice’s theory that beauty invites “contemplation of the divine” (232). In this perspective, she describes aesthetic and artistic passion as similar to religious devotion, because “when we love fictional characters knowing that they can never love us in return, is that not a method of practising in miniature the kind of personally disinterested love to which Jesus calls us?” (232). Desire is not just wanting, Alice remarks, it is a kind of wanting without wanting, a selfless urge. Alice admits she put great importance on material conditions when she was younger, like travelling the world and living a glamorous life. She theorizes this is because she didn’t understand how loneliness and unhappiness were “ordinary” feelings felt by everyone. In fact, she wrote most of her work after a terrible breakup: “It was like God had put his hand on my head and filled me with the most intense desire I had ever felt, not desire for another person, but desire to bring something into being that had never existed before” (235). She concludes that it’s better to love something rather than nothing, trying to see life as a special gift rather than an enduring and painful existence.

On the morning of her wedding, Lola stands with her back to a window, her silhouette outlined in light as she judges Eileen sitting nearby. Eileen fondly remembers childhood moments, tuning into an “aesthetic frequency” as she thinks of old joys and possibilities—but she soon feels uneasy with a troubled melancholy. Her parents, too, contemplate the passing of time throughout their lives, sometimes happily, sometimes mournfully. She feels some sadness in watching her friends move away to other cities over time. She ponders that life used to mean something to her, but she can’t remember quite what.

Eileen recalls an afternoon in her youth when she, Lola, and Simon got caught in the rain and Simon promised her they would be friends forever. She remembers how, years later, they slept together for the first time and drove under a “crescent moon lopsided and golden like a lifted saucer of champagne” (244). Despite that period in life being dreadful with Alice sick and Aidan leaving, Simon brought moments of beauty into her life.

When the wedding party arrives at the church, Eileen catches sight of Simon watching her. Their mutual gaze holds much subtext:

[T]heir phone calls, the messages they wrote to one another, their jealousies, the years of looks, suppressed smiles, their dictionary of little touches. All the stories they had told about each other, about themselves. This much was in their eyes and passed between them (245).

She smiles at him tenderly and silently while they both wonder the same common questions: “[A]m I the one you think about, when we made love were you happy, have I hurt you, do you love me, will you always” (246). Eileen hears her mother calling her, so she tells Simon she will return, and he says he will be waiting for her.

In a quick email to Alice, Eileen reports that the wedding was very beautiful and that she and Simon are travelling to meet Alice. She wonders what life would have been like had Simon proposed to her years ago, theorizing that she may have turned out for the better if things had happened differently. Regardless, she concludes, people are who they are, and that is that. Eileen thinks back to the first day she met Alice, wondering if life is predetermined and if their friendship was destined. Either way, Eileen abandons the question for a brief aside about that “juicy novel” The Golden Bowl, which she can’t wait to gossip about with Alice.

This chapter opens with a snapshot from a distance: Eileen and Alice reuniting. On the train platform, “The women unspeaking, their eyes closed tight, their arms wrapped around one another, for a second, two seconds, three” (250). The women do not notice the grime of the train station nor the unaffected passersby. In this brief moment, there is a flicker of “something concealed beneath the surface of life, not unreality but a hidden reality: the presence at all times, in all places, or a beautiful world” (250). That evening, Felix comes home from work and meets Simon and Eileen in the kitchen, where candles are lit and “the back window was fogged with steam, the glass velvety and blue” (251). After dinner, the four make light conversation while tidying up and cooking dessert. Felix goes outside for a smoke while Simon and Alice clean dishes and talk about work. Alice admits she had a falling out with family at the hospital. She cracks a joke and then asks Simon about Eileen. He dismisses her questions, saying that he’s not exactly happy and it’s the “old life of quiet desperation” these days (255). The rest of the evening fizzles out comfortably, Alice and Eileen listening to the noise and laughter of company. In bed, Alice asks Felix to spend some time with her friends tomorrow, and he shrugs and agrees.